


To Offer Up The Night (Tonight)

by luninosity



Series: McFassy Regency AU [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Regency Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 19:51:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James, Michael, firelight and rain, arranged marriages that maybe just might be exactly real after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Offer Up The Night (Tonight)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for papercutperfect's prompt for the Five Sentence Fic Challenge: _James/Michael, Regency AU_. Five sentences is really hard, you know! And I never write AU anyway! But I tried! Title from the Smashing Pumpkins, this time: “Tonight, Tonight”.

Outside, the walls of the manor house, ancient as the family reputation, loom solidly grey against the wind; inside, the fire, in the study, crackles with warmth, spilling light over the massive wood of the desk, the papers, the notes on estate management, the messages to the War Office, replies and responses, the Fassbender estate offering its not-inconsiderable support against Napoleon, overseas.

James stands there in the firelight, hair falling into his face, still wet because he’d ridden over from the village in the rain, as fast as he could, as soon as he’d realized the terms of the arrangement; he feels too short, and countrified, and awkward, out of his element, wondering what he can possibly bring to this world of power and politics, and he says, watching Michael finish forming elegant words across a sheet of creamy paper, “I know you didn’t want—I mean, I know this was an arranged marriage, our fathers were friends at Oxford but that shouldn’t mean—in any case my particular unlamented parent has passed on, now, so you don’t have to, not if you don’t want this, what _do_ you want, please tell me,” and hopes without expectation that Michael will stop writing and look up and say  “you.”

And Michael does stop writing, and does look up, and blinks, the gleam of the fire catching in his hair and turning it to red and gold, and says, “James, do you realize that you’re the only person who’s ever asked me that—what I want, I mean, about me, not the estate or the money or influence in Parliament.”

“You—”

 “And I’m not going to marry you because our fathers arranged it that way; I’m marrying you because I want to.”


End file.
